


Show Me Where My Armor Ends

by queenieofaces



Series: Life, Love, and Language [3]
Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: 9k about anxiety and language and relationality because I'm deeply predictable, Anxiety, Canon Compliant, Friendship, Gen, Language Barrier, Love in all its forms, M/M, POV Katsuki Yuuri, Panic Attacks, Podfic Available, Pre-Canon, also cameos by most of the rest of the cast, language learning, this is more or less a Victuuri fic but that's not the main focus, through the end of episode 12
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-01
Updated: 2017-05-01
Packaged: 2018-10-26 03:34:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,225
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10778718
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/queenieofaces/pseuds/queenieofaces
Summary: Learning a second language is like learning to skate, Yuuri thinks.  He is no genius, no Victor Nikiforov or hyperpolyglot, has little to no natural talent.  His legs give out and he pops his jumps; his tongue betrays him on R’s and L’s, defiantly curling into the wrong shapes.





	Show Me Where My Armor Ends

**Author's Note:**

> As a heads up, a lot of this fic deals with anxiety (both in general and specifically related to language). There are a couple of descriptions of panic attacks and a lot of general self-loathing and self-deprecation. Yuuri is, as usual, a profoundly unreliable narrator.
> 
> This fic runs more or less parallel to "Repeat After Me," although it's probably understandable even if you haven't read that one.
> 
> Unbeta'd as usual, so when you inevitably find embarrassing typos, please let me know so I can correct them.

Yuuri has his first panic attack when he’s thirteen.

He can’t even remember what set him off, in hindsight--maybe it was falling one too many times in practice or maybe it was the less than stellar grade on his English quiz or maybe it was some mundane inconvenience he has since forgotten.  The twisting, wriggling mass of anxiety that seems to dwell perpetually in his gut, that ball of directionless energy that expands and contracts depending on the day and his mood and the phase of the moon, that noxious mess grows too large for his body to contain.  It fills his lungs and squeezes his heart and he can’t breathe, can’t think or maybe can’t stop thinking, the same nonsense phrase repeating over and over in his head without beginning or end, without space for anything else until it burns itself out and leaves him hollow and wrung out. _I am not good enough I am not good enough I am not good_ enough _IamnotgoodenoughIamnot_

Yuuri doesn’t tell anyone.  He doesn’t want anyone to know about the way his brain backfires sometimes.  They’ll think he’s weak--they’ll _know_ he’s weak.  They might know anyway--Mari always seems to have a distraction when things start getting bad, and Yuuko drags him onto the ice to skate Victor’s programs when his breath starts coming too short and fast.   He lets the swirling mass stay in his gut, pushes it down and ignores it as best he can.  Most days it's small enough to ignore, an irritation rather than an insurmountable hurdle.  On the rare occasions when it spills over, when it drowns him and leaves him shaking and drained, he picks himself up and keeps going.  The least he can do is make sure no one else has to clean up after him.

***

Learning a second language is like learning to skate, Yuuri thinks.  He is no genius, no Victor Nikiforov or hyperpolyglot, has little to no natural talent.  His legs give out and he pops his jumps; his tongue betrays him on R’s and L’s, defiantly curling into the wrong shapes.

But what Yuuri lacks in talent, he makes up in determination.  Yuuri pushes his body to obey, drills again and again until he can launch himself dizzyingly high, until his tongue unsticks itself from the roof of his mouth.  His mind is weak, but he can control his body, can make it strong and push it past its limits.  If he pushes himself too close to the breaking point, if he practices until his body is sore and his head is empty, well, it’s easier to ignore things when he’s too tired to think.

“Your English is so good!” his mother praises him, but he can hear every mistake the moment it leaves his mouth, can hear his accent pulling his words in the wrong direction.  “Your skating is so good!” she says, equally proud, but he can feel his insufficiencies, every wobble and tilt, every underextension and overrotation, each of the tiny ways his body rebels against him.

***

Yuuri has a language partner in Detroit, an American student studying Japanese who constantly laments having to memorize whole separate sets of vocabulary to denote respect and humility.  Yuuri nods along, but he can’t sympathize at all--maybe it’s because he’s a native speaker or maybe it’s because his family runs the inn, but _keigo_ has never been particularly difficult for him.

Besides, it's not as though English doesn't have different registers, he thinks, as his language partner bemoans conjugations for what feels like the fiftieth time.  Switching between _iku_ , _mairu_ , and _irassharu_ is second nature to him, but what about yes, yeah, and yep?  What about the differences between “Are you going to the party tonight?” and “You gonna go to the party tonight?” and “You're going to the party tonight, right?”  Yuuri can understand the basic meaning, can express himself relatively proficiently, but he misses subtle nuance in English, doesn’t intuitively understand the subtext conveyed by certain word choices, certain sentence structures, emphasizing one word or deemphasizing another.

Yuuri understands relationality in Japanese, understands intuitively what it means to be Yuuri-kun versus Katsuki-senshu.  He understands the slow transition from formal to informal speech among friends, how to change his wording depending on his audience, how to gauge his relation to others through the language they use.  But he feels constantly wrong-footed in English, like he’s missing the punchline while everyone else laughs.  He’s always too formal or not formal enough, too distant or too familiar, always awkward, always unsure, always accented and off-rhythm and _foreign_.

“Why do you need a more formal word for ‘tomorrow’?” Yuuri’s language partner grouses, and Yuuri doesn’t know what to say, what excuses and apologies to make for his native tongue.

***

Yuuri has built up barriers over the years, found ways to create buffers between him and the rest of the world.  The first time he realized that he could keep his earbuds in, turn up the music and use it to drown out everything around him, the swirling mass of anxiety softened at the edges instead of digging into his rib cage at every stray sound.

Yuuri uses words as another buffer, draws a circle around himself and constructs a nearly impassable barrier of politeness.  He is polite with the press, polite with his fans, polite with his coach, but it’s a distant sort of politeness, a wall of glass that signals, “Keep out.”  He sees Victor Nikiforov flirt and wink, his ease with press and fans and fellow competitors alike, and Yuuri wishes he could be like that, that he had Victor’s self-confidence and self-assurance.  But if people get close, they'll realize how weak he is, so Yuuri builds up armor to protect his soft underbelly, doesn't let anyone draw near enough to see the gaps. 

***

But then there's Phichit.

Yuuri has never made friends easily--he's too awkward and shy and socially inept, he knows, to win people over.  But Phichit is a social butterfly, pulls people to him and utterly charms them.  Phichit straddles the circle Yuuri has drawn around himself and beams, brighter than the sun, more inexorable than gravity.

Yuuri gets along with Phichit not just because Phichit is fundamentally likable (he is, god, hating Phichit would be like hating puppies--physically possible but profoundly unlikely) but because, underneath superficial differences, they're surprisingly compatible.  Phichit is a natural performer, but he still works as hard as Yuuri both on the ice and off, approaches every element of his program with determination.

“Teach me how to do a step sequence as well as you!” Phichit requests, eyes shining, and Yuuri stammers out modest excuses, but winds up practicing beside him, offering a stuttering critique when Phichit asks.

“Teach me how to improve my accent!” Phichit requests, grinning widely, and Yuuri demurs again, pointing out how bad his own accent is and how far from fluency he is.  But Phichit is unstoppable, Phichit is undeniable, Phichit somehow ropes Yuuri into watching  _The King and the Skater_ with him as “English practice.”  Phichit recites his favorite lines of dialogue in perfect synchrony with the actors, hums along with every song, and Yuuri momentarily forgets his own self-consciousness, forgets to check and double-check his every word and catalogue his every insufficiency.

“This is my friend, Yuuri!” Phichit says when he introduces him, and Yuuri wonders if “friend” is a broader concept in English than Japanese, if “friend” has a less intimate connotation.  “This is my rinkmate, Phichit,” Yuuri says when he introduces him, and he feels his insides knotting up with the worry that he’s insulting Phichit somehow, but Phichit just smiles, bright and easy, and says, “That’s me!”

***

“You sound different in Japanese,” Phichit declares, flopped on his bed as he scrolls through his Instagram feed.  They're studying together, ostensibly--in actuality, there has been very little studying but quite a lot of messing about on the internet.

“Do I?” Yuuri asks distractedly, squinting at his computer screen.  Phichit gave him a playlist the other day-- “Think of it as a mix tape, but there’s no tape!  A mix...file folder!”--and now Yuuri’s trying to figure out how it’s arranged, or even if there’s any connection between the tracks.  It’s profoundly eclectic--1930s big band, Bollywood, American hiphop, Thai pop, and a file titled “crickets.mp3,” which, true to its name, is a 12-minute recording of crickets chirping--but still somehow works as a whole.  He almost wants to ask Phichit, but that feels like a cop out.

“Mm,” Phichit confirms lowering his phone.  “Or, well, you have your regular Japanese voice and your interview voice.”

“I guess I hadn't noticed.”  Yuuri never watches his interviews, can't stand hearing his voice on recordings, wavering and anxious and grating.  It’s worse hearing himself speaking in English, every mistake and mispronunciation laid bare and transmitted to the world.  Thinking about it is enough to make the ball of anxiety expand outward against his rib cage, his heartbeat spiking and breath short.

Perhaps Phichit knows what’s going through his head--he can be perceptive, maybe too perceptive, at times--because he sits up suddenly.  “Your interview voice is like,” his shoulders suddenly tighten, expression flat and distant, voice rocketing upward, “‘I’d like to present a program worthy of your support this year.’  And your normal voice is like,” he sprawls out, voice dropping artificially low, “‘I love dogs; they’re so cute I can’t even believe it.’”

Yuuri can’t stop the giggles that come bubbling up.  “I don’t sound like that.”

“You do,” Phichit insists, obviously pleased with himself.  “And then your English voice sounds like,” his next words are slow and careful, voice higher again, “‘Phichit, we should watch _The King and the Skater_ again; it’s my favorite movie.’”

Yuuri doesn’t even try to suppress his laughter this time.  “I _know_ I don’t sound like that.”

“But you could!” Phichit insists, and then he breaks down in delighted laughter as well.  “Oh!  Do I sound different in Thai?”

Yuuri considers.  “I don’t think so.”  Phichit is so bright and excited, regardless of the language he’s speaking, is sunshine and charisma incarnate.  He says his English isn’t as good as Yuuri’s, but he has an ease about him, a self-confidence that Yuuri desperately wishes he could replicate.  Yuuri freezes and second-guesses and rehearses conversations in his head a dozen times before he works up the courage to initiate them (and even then, half the time, when he’s finally ready to speak the moment has been lost).  In contrast, Phichit laughs off his own mistakes, turns mispronunciations into inside jokes and tweets them to the world.  But maybe there's some subtle difference Yuuri has missed--it's not as though he's paid attention to Phichit’s interviews, and he tries to give him privacy when he calls home.  “Sorry, I'm not sure.”

“Well, you'll just have to take notes next time!” Phichit declares, and Yuuri agrees without protest.

***

As usual, Yuuri can’t point to something specific that sets him off--practice is exhausting, but it has always been exhausting, and school is no more stressful than it ever is.  But something sends him tipping over the edge and he barely makes it to the locker room before he crumples, heart racing and hands shaking and vision blurring at the edges.  He can’t breathe, can’t move, but _has_ to move, _has_ to find some sort of outlet for the uncontrollable swell of energy that fills him.   _Stupid stupid_ stupid _stupid_

“Yuuri?” Phichit’s voice calls, and Yuuri tries to choke out some platitude, a simple, “I’m fine, no need to worry,” but he reaches for words and finds nothing there but buzzing blankness that winds its way around his windpipe.

“Yuuri?”  Phichit’s voice is closer now, and his feet come into Yuuri’s view, but Yuuri can’t bring himself to look up, dread weighing his head down.  “Yuuri, are you okay?”  He sounds worried, and that just amps Yuuri anxiety up further, hand scrubbing across his knee in a repetitive motion to try to release the nervous energy that’s roaring through him.  “Should I get Ciao Ciao?”

“No!” Yuuri manages to force out, eyes squeezed shut.  The last thing he wants is Celestino to see him like this.  The last thing he wants is for _anyone_ to see him like this, but it’s already too late too late too late.

“Do...do you want me to leave?” Phichit asks hesitantly, and Yuuri doesn’t know, he doesn’t know, he doesn’t want to _think_ anymore.   _You’re so pathetic god you’re_ pathetic _you can’t even figure out what you_ want _patheticpatheticpathetic_

He’s dimly aware of Phichit sitting down beside him, leaving enough space between them that he doesn’t feel crowded. He can hear Phichit speaking, but everything is too much and too loud and he can’t process anything, can’t do anything but get air into his lungs and try not to shake apart on the locker room floor.

When the last of the nervous energy has drained out of him, Yuuri finally manages to look up.  Phichit is still sitting beside him, telling some rambling story about Leo as though his life depends on it.  He looks scared, hands clenched into fists in his lap and shoulders tight, and Yuuri hates that--hates how unnatural the expression looks on his face, hates that he’s responsible.

“I’m okay,” Yuuri says quietly, his voice only cracking a little.

“Okay,” Phichit says, and some of the tension eases out of his shoulders.  “Sorry, I panicked and didn’t know what to do but I thought I remembered reading something about panic attacks and not leaving people alone?  I think I read that somewhere?  And talking to keep people grounded but then I couldn’t think of what to say so I--”

“It’s okay,” Yuuri interrupts him, squeezing his eyes shut again.  “Sorry.”  He just wants to drop through the floor, have the ceiling collapse, anything to get Phichit to stop looking at him like that, like somehow _Phichit_ is the one in the wrong here.

“No, it’s fine, you don’t need to apologize.”  Yuuri can hear Phichit shift slightly, hesitating.  “Do...do you want to talk about it?”

Anxiety jolts through Yuuri’s body and he barely manages to choke out a “N-no!”

“Okay," Phichit rushes to placate him.  “We don’t need to.”

“Thanks,” Yuuri mumbles.  His hand hurts--a friction burn, he thinks, from rubbing it against his knee too hard--and he winces.  “Give me a minute and then I’ll go back to practice.”

They don’t talk about it again.  Phichit treats him as he always has--he does not fuss or hover or treat him like he might break in a stiff breeze.  He makes Yuuri a new playlist, seamlessly transitioning from techno to a Rodgers and Hammerstein musical, and asks Yuuri if he has any recommendations in return.  (Yuuri stammers some excuses, unable to think of anything in his music library that isn’t intensely embarrassing.)  Phichit tries to teach him how to take the perfect selfie, but it just devolves into the two of them trying to take pictures from the strangest angles possible, Yuuri trying to snap a picture one-handed while bent backward in a bridge as Phichit alternates between spotting him and laughing so hard he can’t breathe.  

“This is my friend, Yuuri!” Phichit introduces him, and Yuuri feels guilt well up fresh and bright.  He can’t stop his anxiety from overflowing occasionally, no matter how hard he tries, but he can stop himself from falling apart in front of Phichit.  The least he can do to repay his friendship is keep his mess away from him.

***

“Teach me how to say something in Japanese!” Phichit says brightly, and Yuuri shoots back without thinking, “Only if you teach me something in Thai.”

Phichit treats it like a game, and somehow that takes the pressure off of Yuuri.  There are no tests here, no one evaluating his ability to replicate a teacher's words and intonation.  There are no grades, no points, no consequences if he fails (other than Phichit’s laughter, but Phichit laughs twice as hard at his own mistakes).  He does not get a gold star or a smiley face at the top of his paper when he succeeds, but he does get Phichit clapping his hands together in delight and exclaiming, “Okay, now teach me how to say that in Japanese!”  It feels nice to share bits and pieces of their native languages in a foreign land, to have a brief respite from the endless barrage of English English English.  

Phichit sings along to Thai pop at top volume as he cleans his hamsters’ cage, and Yuuri shyly joins him on the chorus.  It’s only a few words, repeated over and over, and he’s listened to this song on Phichit’s playlist enough times to feel somewhat confident that he’s hearing them right, but Phichit beams at him anyway.  The next week Yuuri finally gives in to Phichit’s prodding and plays some truly embarrassing J-Pop.  The songs conjure up memories of secretly dancing with Mari in the banquet room when they were supposed to be doing chores, posing and giggling and pretending they were members of whichever idol group she was following at the moment.  Phichit tries to puzzle out which parts of the song are in English (answer: many more than he thinks) and then pulls Yuuri up to dance, the two of them trying to navigate the cramped space of the dorm room.  It’s nothing like dancing with Mari, much more coordinated despite the space constraints, but leaves him grinning all the same.

“This is my friend, Yuuri!” Phichit manages to string together in mostly comprehensible Japanese (he uses _ga_ instead of _wa_ , but who's counting?), and Yuuri shoots back, “Okay, now teach me how to say that in Thai.”

***

Yuuri comes home to Hasetsu.  It's strange to return to being Yuuri-kun and Katsuki-san and “Toshiya-san’s son--the skater?” when he was only ever Yuuri in Detroit.  It's easier to navigate Hasetsu, to understand where he is supposed to fit, how he is supposed to relate to others.  But it was easier to hide in Detroit--to shut the door to his room and keep the rest of the world out.  Here, there are so many people he knows, so many people he doesn’t know who nevertheless know him, so many people asking after him and cheering him on and invested in his future.

“If you're going to keep skating, I'll support you, but,” Mari says, and Yuuri doesn’t know what to say to her--she's known him long and well enough to see through any attempt at deflection or misdirection.

“The Nishigori family's always got your back!” Nishigori tells him, and Yuuri appreciates the support, but he needs to figure out what he needs to keep skating on his own, and he can only do that, well, on his own. So he appreciates the support, really, he does, but sometimes he wishes he was back in Detroit, fighting on his own without his hometown pressing in so close to remind him of every way he's failed them.

***

Victor bursts into Yuuri’s life, energetic and bright and very, _very_ naked.  If he sees the circle Yuuri has drawn around himself, the impassable barrier he’s created, he ignores it, hurling himself into Yuuri’s space as though it belongs to him.  Yuuri’s family and Minako-sensei and the Nishigoris have learned to keep their distance, to give Yuuri his space and his privacy, but Victor charges ahead, poking at Yuuri’s every vulnerability and prodding at his every insufficiency, so sure that Yuuri is a diamond in the rough that just needs a little polishing.

“Hmm,” Mari teases, “I guess he really does look like the posters.  Especially his--”

“Mari!” Yuuri hisses, frantically glancing at Victor, who is smiling at Yuuri with that expectant look he’s come to fear.

“What?  He can’t understand Japanese.”

“Don’t!”

“Yuuri.”  Victor pouts, an honest to god pout, and it’s ridiculous and childish and he should not look anywhere near as good as he does.  “What are you talking about?”

“Nothing!” Yuuri says at the same time that Mari says, “You,” and Yuuri tries not to screech as Mari cackles, quickly exiting the room.

“ _Yuuri_.”  Victor reaches for Yuuri, but Yuuri flinches backward.  Victor’s smile wavers almost imperceptibly and he lets his hand drop.  “I guess I’ll just have to learn Japanese,” he says brightly.

“Please don’t,” Yuuri moans, face buried in his hands.  If Victor learns Japanese, that’ll be one less barrier between them, one less way to keep distance between them.  Yuuri's afraid of what will happen if Victor gets too close, if he sees Yuuri as he really is, in all his insufficiency.  But every time Yuuri pushes him away, Victor comes back, boundless enthusiasm and absolute certainty, perfection incarnate.

***

Victor is Victor, is always just Victor, never Coach Victor or Victor-san or (heaven forbid) Nikiforov-san.

“Don't you think calling him that is too familiar?” Yuuri asks, after Mari mentions that Victor, no honorific, has gone out drinking with Minako-sensei again.

Mari stares at him blankly.  “You call him ‘Victor.’”

“We speak English--it’s different in English,” Yuuri protests.

Mari snorts. “You've always called him ‘Victor.’” She pitches her voice upward, hands on her cheeks in a wide-eyed mockery. “‘Did you see Victor’s backflip?  Victor is so cool, right?  Mom, Mom, can I get this poster of Victor?’”

“There are no back flips in figure skating,” Yuuri retorts, blushing furiously.  He doesn’t know how to explain that Victor never needed an honorific for all those years, in the same way historical figures and fictional heroes don't need honorifics; nobody talks about Hideyoshi-san or Harry Potter-san.  Victor was a god, unreachable by a mere mortal like Yuuri, so honorifics seemed unnecessary.  Now that Victor is here, has miraculously deigned to descend to the same plane as Yuuri, it's hard to break the habit.  Leaving off the honorific made Victor untouchable before, but now it's too familiar, tricks Yuuri into feeling an artificial closeness when they couldn't be farther apart.

“Well, his last name is too hard to pronounce,” Mari says decisively, as though she hasn't taught herself harder foreign names, suffered through Schwarzenegger and Connery without batting an eye.

Yuuri’s mother keeps calling Victor “Vicchan” and that’s even more embarrassing, but Yuuri doesn’t bother to correct her.  He doesn’t want to deal with her knowing smile and her warm reassurances that Victor doesn’t mind in the slightest.  (He probably doesn’t, but, also, he doesn’t understand what it _means_.  But Yuuri would rather hurl himself into the sun than have _that_ conversation.)

***

It’s a few days before Onsen on Ice, and Nishigori is helping Yuuri stretch, hands solid against his back and keeping him from straightening up even as his calves protest.  Yuuko’s off helping Yurio with...something--Yuuri realizes he wasn’t really paying attention, too caught up in replaying Victor’s feedback in his mind, scrutinizing every frown and considering look for the first indication that he’s tiring of Yuuri, that he’s realized how limited Yuuri’s capacity really is and has decided to return to Russia.  Nishigori volunteered to stay behind and help Yuuri stretch, and a thought occurs to Yuuri, so painfully obvious that he doesn’t know why he didn’t think of it before.  “You don’t have to help me.”

“What?”  Nishigori’s hands don’t waver, still providing resistance as Yuuri tries to touch his head to his knees, contort his body into shapes it was not built to make.

“You shouldn’t feel obligated to help me,” Yuuri says, trying to speak loudly enough that his voice isn’t muffled by his position.  “I know you’re busy.”

Nishigori lifts his hands from Yuuri’s back so Yuuri can straighten up.  “I’m not doing this because I have to.”

“Oh.”  Yuuri tries to think of a reason other than obligation that Nishigori would take time out of his day to help him.  Yuuko has been helping Yurio, in part because her English is good enough that he can communicate more easily with her than most of the other people in Hasetsu.  Could Nishigori be trying to level the playing field?

Maybe Yuuri’s internal monologue shows on his face, because Nishigori says, “Like I said, the Nishigori family’s always got your back.”

“Thank you.”  It’s an automatic response, mostly reflex but still sincere.

Nishigori nods and gestures for Yuuri to spread his legs into a straddle so he can practice his middle splits.

It’s when Yuuri’s nearly got his nose to the floor, Nishigori applying enough pressure to keep him from springing back up but not enough to force him into stretching more than is comfortable, that Yuuri finds the words to try again.  “It’s just that...I don’t want to impose, so…”

Nishigori scoffs, more amused than irritated (or so Yuuri hopes).

“I just don’t...” Yuuri’s voice comes out much quieter than he intended, small and wavering.  “If I don’t win…”

“Yuuri,” Nishigori says, and he lifts his hands so Yuuri can straighten up slowly.  “Don’t think that we’re doing this because we’re expecting you to win.  We’d like you to win, yes, but win or lose, we’ve all got your back.  Okay?”

“Okay,” Yuuri says carefully, and Nishigori slaps him on the back a bit too vigorously.

***

Once Nishigori has pointed it out, Yuuri can’t stop seeing it.  Maybe it’s because both Victor and Yurio are visiting, making visible things that Yuuri has always taken for granted, or maybe it’s because Yuuri’s back home after five years away and everyone is crowding close to make up for lost time.  

Mari cleans out the storage room for Yurio with minimal complaint, and their mother welcomes Yurio and Victor like long-lost family members, albeit ones she can’t communicate with at all.  Yuuri keeps walking in on his mother trying to cheerfully point and gesture her way through conversations with Victor, who nearly pokes his eye out gesturing back, and Yurio, who grumbles about just about everything but still, somehow, learns how to say “thank you” in Japanese.  (“What?” he spits, when Yuuri doesn’t quite manage to hide his smile fast enough.)

Minako-sensei offers both him and Yurio studio space, and lets Victor drag her around town to interpret for him when Yuuri’s too tired after practice.  “I don’t mind,” she says, when Yuuri apologizes for the imposition, and then invites him to join them next time.  (Yuuri manages to successfully duck that invitation.  He can’t imagine anything more potentially excruciating than spending an evening with Victor at an _izakaya_ ; who knows what he might say or do with lowered inhibitions.)

The triplets may be terrible skating otaku, but they’re also a veritable Greek chorus of support, flitting between the three skaters to cheer them on (and probably to take secret pictures and post them on the internet, but, still, maybe it’s the thought that counts in this case?).  “ _Ganba_ , Yuuri!” they yell from the sidelines, camcorder at the ready.  Yurio mutters something about not being so pathetic as to need a bunch of kids to cheer for him, but he still looks pleased when they shout, “ _Ganba_ , Yuri!” as he takes the ice.

Yuuri’s always been fighting on his own, except now he isn’t.  He has what feels like the entire town of Hasetsu rallying around him, offering a hand and tracking his progress.  He’s always felt the weight of their expectations keenly, but now that weight is tempered with their love for him, expressed through the way they welcome Victor with open arms, the way they tolerate Yurio’s fits of teenage temper.  It’s the way Minako-sensei opens her door to him in the middle of the night, the way Mari suddenly needs him to help with a very repetitive and mind-numbing chore right when his anxiety starts ramping up, the way Nishigori puts him into some kind of joyful headlock when he manages to beat his previous time running up the stairs.  He’s not the sole focus of their attention, and that makes it easier, somehow, makes the scrutiny more bearable.  He doesn’t know what to call the feeling he has for all of them, the intense gratitude and affection (with surprisingly minimal guilt) but he decides to call it love.

***

Yuuri catches Victor puzzling over doubled consonants with Mari; she only laughs a little bit when he trips over his own tongue and skips glottal stops.  It’s strange for Yuuri to see Victor being anything less than polished, anything less than perfection embodied.  It’s uncomfortable to see him tripped up by simple phrases, confused by particles and conjugations, making mistake after mistake without ever stuttering or shrinking into himself.  Victor’s Japanese is, frankly, awful, but Victor speaks with the self-confidence of someone who is absolutely certain that he’s going to screw up but powers through anyway.  “Wow, that’s embarrassing!” Victor responds brightly, when Mari points out that _Gintama_ is an anime and _kintama_ is...well, something else entirely.  But nothing slows Victor down; no mistake dulls his enthusiasm and no humiliation makes him retreat.  Yuuri keeps catching Victor practicing Japanese when he thinks Yuuri isn’t paying attention, soaking up vocabulary from the triplets and nodding along to grammar corrections from Yuuko and, for some inexplicable reason, paying rapt attention to Saga-ben lessons from Mari.  (Why on Earth would Victor want to speak _Saga-ben_?   _Yuuri_ doesn’t want to speak Saga-ben, and he doesn’t have the added difficulty of a non-native language, of a tongue that has not yet learned how to properly shape words.)

Yuuri is so surprised the first time he hears Victor make a mistake in English that his feet nearly go out from under him.  (“Yuuri, are you alright?” Victor calls worriedly.  “Do you need to take a break?”  Yuuri brushes him off, says he just lost his footing, which, of course, backfires horribly since Victor spends the rest of the afternoon worrying aloud that Yuuri has forgotten how to skate in a straight line.)  Once he’s heard one mistake, he starts to hear more--mispronunciations and eggcorns, conflicting tenses and double negatives.  It makes Victor sound human.  It tricks Yuuri into thinking that they have some common ground, struggling to string words together in a vaguely coherent fashion in a non-native language.  He hates it and he loves it and he can't stop hearing it no matter how hard he tries.

***

“I’ve been missing Detroit,” Phichit tells him, yawning widely as he treks across his apartment to feed his hamsters.  He keeps lowering his arm without thinking, leaving Yuuri with a view of his face from the nose down, but Yuuri doesn’t want to bother him when he’s focused on something else.

“Detroit?” Yuuri asks idly.  He’s just got home from training and is sitting in bone-deep exhaustion, not quite able to summon the energy to stand up and walk downstairs to eat dinner.

“Yeah.  I mean, I’m glad to be back in Bangkok, but sometimes I still…”  He trails off, uncharacteristically pensive.

“I miss Detroit too,” Yuuri admits.  “I don’t even know why.”

“It must be for the delicious cuisine,” Phichit teases.

“The malls,” Yuuri proclaims dramatically, “truly, what could ever live up to an American mall.”

They both laugh but then Phichit’s smile wavers into something a bit more serious.  “I do mean it, though.  Detroit wasn’t the same once you were gone.”

“Hasetsu isn’t the same without you,” Yuuri says because it’s true--he’d gotten used to having Phichit by his side, training and studying and laughing and living life to the fullest.

“But you have Victor,” Phichit says, and he has that gleam in his eye that spells trouble.

“Yes, but Victor isn’t you,” Yuuri replies, hoping to shut down that line of questioning.

“Wow, Yuuri, I’m honored!”  Phichit presses a hand over his heart, but he still has that smile that says Yuuri’s distraction failed.  “You should come visit me in Bangkok sometime.  Bring Victor with you.”

“Ah.”  Yuuri glances toward his bedroom door, even though he’s got headphones in, so Victor wouldn’t be able to hear Phichit even if he happened to be hovering right outside.  “I don’t...I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“It sounds like a great idea to me,” Phichit insists.  “He obviously likes traveling--have you seen his social media?  I could show you the sights and interpret, and I know where all the best food is…”

“No, no, I mean, I don’t...we don’t have that kind of relationship.”

“Ohoho?”  Yuuri immediately knows that he’s misstepped.  “What kind of relationship do you have, then?”

Yuuri can feel himself blushing furiously.  Phichit knows about his long-standing crush on Victor--probably most of the universe knows about it now, knowing Yuuri’s luck--but it’s still embarrassing to think about the way his coach pushes himself into Yuuri’s space and tells him that he’s beautiful and desirable, almost like he really means it, like it’s not some kind of ploy to make him perform eros better.  “He’s my...coach?”

“Uh huh,” Phichit says, but it does not sound like agreement.  “Victor uploads an awful lot of pictures of you.  And those hashtags don’t quite scream ‘coach-student relationship.’”

Despite having been friends with Phichit for years, Yuuri has only the vaguest sense of how hashtags work, and has spent much longer panicking over how spectacularly unphotogenic he is than the words Victor has paired with his uploads.  “I.  I’m.”

“Just ask him,” Phichit suggests with an exaggerated wink.  “I think he’ll say yes.”

***

“Should I be calling you ‘Yuuri-san’?” Victor asks out of the blue one day.  He looks less certain than usual, somehow, even though he sounds casual.

Yuuri wonders if someone pulled him aside or if he came the realization on his own.  He thinks of honorifics and levels of formality, of remolding the ill-defined space Victor occupies, turning it into something easier to pin down and comprehend.

He doesn’t want that.  It’s a strange realization--he’d rather have Victor, no honorific, in this strange, ambiguous space than Victor-kun or Victor-san or Victor-senpai.  He would rather keep tricking himself into feeling an artificial closeness, would rather leave room for Victor to keep standing in Yuuri’s space as though it belongs to him.

“No,” Yuuri replies, before he can second guess himself, “just Yuuri is fine.”

Victor smiles--one million kilowatts, one trillion kilowatts, enough kilowatts to light the entirety of Japan for the rest of Yuuri’s natural life.  “Okay.  Just Victor is fine for me too.”

***

“Photo?” one of the younger skaters (Yuuri should know his name, he _knows_ he should know, but it’s been knocked from his head by the combination of adrenaline and blunt force trauma) asks in English, and Yuuri is already holding out his hand when he hands his smart phone to Victor instead.

“On three!” Victor calls as the skater (what is his name, what is his _name_ , Yuuri _knows_ he should know his name) positions himself beside Yuuri, beaming.  Yuuri’s sure that the first few pictures will be completely unusable, because it takes a moment for him to school his expression into something other than shock and vague unease.

“Did you want a picture with Victor?” Yuuri asks, and the skater (Suzuki? Yamashita?  Some common family name, he’s fairly certain) waves off the offer as he politely takes his phone back and then stammers a couple of sentences in very formal Japanese about how much he’s looking forward to seeing Yuuri compete in the Grand Prix before he scurries away.

 _“Yuuri_ ,” Victor says, draping himself over Yuuri, “you _have_ to get better at dealing with your fans,” and Yuuri can only nod in shocked silence.

***

“You can clap,” Yuuri tells Victor, when he catches him struggling yet again with the difference between _mate_ and _matte_.  “One clap per _mora_.”  He demonstrates, hands in front of him and words intentionally slow.  “ _Ma-t_ _e_.   _Ma_ -” clap “- _tte_.”

Victor’s eyes go wide and he mimics Yuuri immediately, hands and mouth moving out of sync on his first try but together on his second.  “Amazing!” he declares, as though Yuuri has taught him the secrets of the universe instead of a simple trick he picked up from his language partner.  “Thank you, Yuuri!” he says, and Yuuri can’t tamp down the flush of pride, the sliver of warmth that breaks through the writhing mass of anxiety for the briefest moment.

***

It doesn’t last, of course.

Yuuri sees the warning signs, knows intimately the creeping dread that takes his lungs hostage and sends his legs jittering.  He can’t stop thinking about failure, about wiping out, about his body betraying him, a compilation of his every mistake--from falling the first time he stepped onto the ice to his less than stellar toe flip at his last practice--spliced together in an endless loop in his brain.   _I’m going to fall I’m going to fall I’m going to_ fall _I’mgoingto_

It’s worse now that Victor’s here, now that he can imagine just how disappointed Victor will look when Yuuri fails, how embarrassed he’ll be when the press starts raking him over the coals for throwing away his career to coach a dime-a-dozen, third-tier (fourth-tier, if he’s being honest, so low in the tiers that numbering them doesn’t even make sense) skater.  Actually, maybe Victor won’t be embarrassed--he never seems to be embarrassed by _anything_ \--but that’s almost _worse_.  It was easier when Yuuri’s failure was his alone, when he didn’t let anyone into his space to share in his failures and triumphs (but mostly failures, if he’s honest).  No one expects anything from Katsuki Yuuri, but the world expects so much from Victor Nikiforov, from Yuuri as an extension of Victor.  But Yuuri is not Victor, and Yuuri will never be able to meet their expectations.  Victor says Yuuri is a diamond in the rough, but, really, he’s just an ordinary rock that Victor has wasted his time on.

It's been years since he last melted down in front of another person, and this time is no better than the last.  It seems like Victor is doing everything wrong, everything he possibly can to make it _worse_ , and Yuuri’s shouting him down before he can second guess himself, too much of his energy focused on staying upright and not dissolving into a hyperventilating puddle for him to pull his punches and filter his words.

Victor looks uneasy and off-balance and terribly, _terribly_ human.   _He has no idea what he’s doing_ , Yuuri realizes as his vision swims and his chest constricts, and somehow that realization is simultaneously comforting and terrifying.  Yuuri’s been expecting Victor to be perfect, but Victor is no more perfect than Yuuri--he’s a better skater, more charismatic, more comfortable with an audience, but still.  Still.  They’re both just fumbling along, Victor throwing words at things until eventually something sticks, while Yuuri inspects and weighs every utterance, holding each so tightly, afraid that they might escape at the wrong time, that they dig into his skin.   _Maybe Victor just sounds more fluent because he’s more self-confident_ , Yuuri thinks through the haze of adrenaline and exhaustion and nerves as Victor leads him back to the rink, expression tight.

***

“Wow, Yuuri, you have so many friends,” Victor says, when Yuuri finally manages to extricate himself after descending from the podium in Beijing.  There was the podium selfie, of course, taken by Phichit, and then more selfies with Phichit and Leo and Guang Hong, and then Chris wanted to join in, of course, and before Yuuri knew it, he was being roped into dozens of pictures, arms around his neck, arms around his waist, pulled snugly against the others’ sides as they stretched their arms as far as they could reach (Phichit having forgotten his selfie stick in the hotel room).

“What?”  Yuuri can feel himself crashing, the adrenaline and podium high finally wearing off.  His eyeballs feel gummy and his chest feels hollowed out, the squirming mass of anxiety momentarily gone (along with most of his energy, and, god, he just wants to lie down and not get up for maybe another fifty years).

“Takeshi and Yuuko said you weren’t very good at making friends.”  Victor beams at Yuuri, looking...proud?  Why should he be proud?  Yuuri chalks it up to sleep-deprivation playing tricks on his eyes.  “But you’re so popular!  I guess I’ll have to work hard to get any time with you.”  He winks.

Yuuri can feel himself blushing, but still he repeats, “What?  Have you confused me with you?”

Victor’s smile dims slightly.  “What?”

“I’m not popular,” Yuuri mumbles.  “You’re the popular one.  You’re the one with fans.”

Victor is frowning at him now, and Yuuri wishes he would stop, wishes they could just end this conversation and go back to the hotel room and sleep.  “Yuuri,” he says sternly.  “There’s Phichit--”

“He was my rinkmate in Detroit,” Yuuri explains.

“--and Leo and Guang Hong--”

“I know them through Phichit; they’re really his friends.”

“--and Chris--”

“I barely know Chris!”

Victor’s frown deepens at that.  “ _Yuuri_.”  It's that disappointed look again, the one he leveled at Yuuri in Okayama, and Yuuri wants to take everything back, turn back the clock until they're lying on the ice again and Victor’s proud of him instead of upset.  “Do you not like them?”

“N-no!” Yuuri insists.  “I'm just...we're not...I don't think we're that close.”

Victor stares at him for a long moment, and Yuuri tries not to squirm under his gaze.  But then Victor just says, “Okay,” and then ushers him back to the hotel.

***

That evening, Victor gushes over the podium selfie Phichit posts (“I'd like this a thousand times if I could!”) but Yuuri gets caught on the caption: “Sharing the podium with my #bestfriend #katsukiyuuri” and then a string of hashtags and emojis Yuuri only half understands but he’s sure have some deeper meaning he’s missing.

Yuuri doesn’t have long to puzzle over it, as Victor demands his attention with a plaintive, “ _Yuuri_ , I want to kiss you; come here,” but over the next week he keeps turning “best friend” over and over in his mind, the words blindingly bright no matter what angle he views them from.

***

“Victor was asking about you,” Mari says, apropos of nothing as they stand shoulder to shoulder washing dishes, Mari rinsing while Yuuri dries.  “He wanted to know about the anxiety.”

Yuuri feels it begin to crawl up his throat, seizing control of his vocal cords.  He knew that something bad was going to come out of this; he _knew_ that it would be too much for Victor to handle, for _anyone_ to handle.

“He wanted to know how he could help,” Mari explains quickly, as though she’s already caught onto Yuuri’s train of thought, but she doesn’t look up from the bowl she’s rinsing, all her attention focused on the task at hand.

Yuuri’s anxiety grinds to a halt at the sudden dead end. “O-oh?”

“I told him that he should ask you.”  She hands him the bowl and he takes it automatically, lifting the towel to dry it before he has the chance to think.  “I told him that I don’t want to talk behind your back.”

“You can,” Yuuri blurts out.  “You can talk to him about it.  If you want.”  He doesn’t know how to explain that he’d rather not talk about it--if Mari can have all the hard conversations for him, so much the better.

“Hmm.”  Mari’s already rinsing another plate, movements quick and efficient.  “Alright.”

“Thanks,” Yuuri says quietly.

“You should still talk to him,” Mari says, as though that’s easy, just a question of coaxing his body and voice into a simple exchange of words.

“I’ll think about it,” Yuuri hedges, and Mari rolls her eyes.

***

“Victor called me ‘ _nee-san_ ’ while you were gone,” Mari says after Victor has finally been shooed toward bed. (He was nodding off at the dinner table, exhausted from several days of worrying over Makkachin and Yuuri, and probably would have just fallen asleep on the floor again if Mari hadn’t insisted.)

The apologies start tumbling from Yuuri’s mouth in an anxious waterfall before she can even finish the sentence.

She waves him off. “It's fine. I don't mind.”

“I'll talk to him,” Yuuri insists, face burning and stomach squirming with embarrassment.  “He probably heard me saying it, and he doesn’t know what it means.”

“He knows."  She sounds amused, which helps ease Yuuri's anxiety a little bit.  "I think he just said it accidentally because he was tired.”

“Yes, but--”

“Yuuri.  I said it's _fine_.”

Yuuri swallows down his apologies at Mari’s tone.  He ducks his head, hands twisting in his lap as he tries to figure out how to broach the topic of appropriate formality levels with his coach.  Will Victor even understand or care that he's being overly familiar?  He’s been draping himself all over Yuuri since they met, so there’s a chance that he’ll just laugh off Yuuri’s correction.

“He was really worried about you, you know,” Mari says in that careful tone she uses when she's trying to figure out what he’s thinking but isn’t willing to ask.

“Sorry,” Yuuri mumbles.

“Why are you apologizing?”

“If I were a better skater, he wouldn't have to worry.”  Yuuri hates how small and wavering his voice sounds, like he's got a bad head cold or is about to cry.

“Yuuri,” Mari says, exasperated and fond and every inch a big sister, “he wasn't worrying about your _skating_.”

“Sorry.”  Yuuri doesn’t know what else to say.  His mind keeps shying away from the implications of Mari’s words--the idea that Victor might be worried about _him_ is somehow even more anxiety-provoking than the idea that Victor is worried about Yuuri embarrassing them both by wiping out.  Yuuri can understand his family worrying about him (they’re his _family_ ) and the Nishigori family worrying about him (the triplets are total skating otaku and he’s known Yuuko and Takeshi since childhood).  Hasetsu doesn’t produce many people with national, let alone international, recognition, so of course the people of the town would worry about him.  But Victor?  Victor is his coach.  His coach who he is, more or less, dating, but that’s surely just a short-term thing.  They haven’t talked about it, because Yuuri isn’t willing to have that conversation unless he can do it perfectly, but surely.  Surely.

“Anyway.”  Mari stands in a single fluid motion, smoothing her apron flat as she tries to hide a smirk.  “I told him he can call me ‘ _nee-san_ ’ if he wants.”

(He does.  Repeatedly.  If Yuuri didn’t know better, he would think that he and Mari are in league to give him a heart attack.  Then, he catches the two of them whispering over something conspiratorially, and later that week, when an old man stops Yuuri on the street to ask if he’s that skater whose posters are all over the train station, Victor introduces himself proudly in accented but surprisingly intelligible Japanese as “Yuuri’s coach _and_ lover.”  Yuuri revises his earlier assessment--they are _definitely_ in league and are _definitely_ going to give him a heart attack.)

***

It takes Yuuri a full three days to figure out the circuitous path that led to Minami-kun being invited to Hasetsu to watch the Grand Prix Final--it involves the triplets being overactive on social media, Minako-sensei having taught Minami’s coach once upon a time, and the Nishigori family offering him a place to stay.  Even knowing that, he’s still not quite sure how they got from point A to point B.  

The point, though, is that somehow Minami-kun has been invited to Hasetsu to watch the Grand Prix Final.  More baffling than that, everyone around him seems to be treating this as a totally normal state of affairs.

“He sounds like a nice boy,” his mother says when he brings it up, which is not the _point_.  “I hope he likes Hasetsu.”

“Oh, the one with the hair?” Mari asks, but then is interrupted by Victor and Makkachin bounding through the door and demanding everyone’s attention.

“I’ve told the girls, no pictures without permission,” Yuuko tells him, “so don’t worry,” and Yuuri can’t find the words to explain that that’s not what he’s worried about.

***

“I can’t believe they have video,” Yuuri moans, faceplanted on the table while Phichit pats his arm comfortingly with one hand and eats with the other.  Victor disappeared off somewhere while Yuuri was asleep, but Phichit swooped in to drag him to breakfast before Yuuri could start worrying too much about what Victor’s absence might mean.

“See, I told you those pole dancing lessons would come in handy,” Phichit says in what he probably thinks is a comforting tone.  

Yuuri raises his head from the table and Phichit is grinning, so, then again, maybe he’s not trying to be comforting.  Yuuri lets his head fall back to the table with an audible thunk.  “Phichit, please.”

“Yuuri, please,” Phichit mimics back.  “You seduced your crush with a pole dance.  He literally flew across an ocean for you.  You’re _engaged_.”

“ _Please_.”

“I’m just saying.”

“I don’t understand,” Yuuri says, and he’s trying not to whine but he’s not sure how successful he is.  “I embarrassed myself in front of everyone, and--”

“Yuuri,” Phichit interrupts him, somehow managing to get a finger to Yuuri’s lips to shush him despite Yuuri’s face still being plastered on the table, “I love you, but you do this thing?  Where you assume that nobody likes you, even though they do?”

“I don’t,” Yuuri mumbles, trying to sink into the table, and Phichit shushes him again.

“Victor loves you.”  Phichit ticks each point off on his fingers.  “I haven’t been competing as long as you, but everyone keeps talking about how _happy_ he looks now.  You’re my best friend.  Chris likes you, and not just because you pole danced with him mostly naked, although that probably didn’t hurt.  Yuri Plisetsky puts on a tough act, but, c’mon, look at him.  Sara was just telling me the other day that she wishes she knew you better.  Leo--”

“Stop.”  Yuuri can feel his face burning.

“No,” Phichit says, with a sort of joyful viciousness.  “Leo says that you--”

“ _Stop_.”

“Yuuri, Yuuri, Yuuri.”  Phichit pats his cheek.  “Face it; everyone loves you.”

“But I’m not--”  The words come out strangled and Yuuri takes a deep breath, willing his voice not to break.  “I don’t _do_ anything.”

Phichit tsks.  “Remember when I was really homesick and you took me out to karaoke?”

“No,” Yuuri says truthfully.  He can’t ever remember Phichit being homesick--Phichit is bright and energetic and never, ever dimmed by anxiety or sadness.

“Remember when I got really nervous about doing the bank stuff in English and you went with me and helped me when I got stuck?”

Yuuri has a vague memory of talking to bank tellers, more concerned that he wasn’t intelligible than by Phichit’s uncharacteristic silence.  “Maybe.”

“You do this thing,” Phichit says patiently, “where you think you matter less to everyone than you actually do.”

A thousand objections fill Yuuri’s head, but he holds them all back.  He knows Phichit is inflating Yuuri’s importance, but he also knows that Phichit is very, very stubborn.

“Let’s find your fiancé after breakfast.”  Phichit nudges Yuuri’s mostly untouched plate toward him.  “I need to get a picture with both of you and your engagement rings!”

***

“Good job,” Yuuri says, and he feels stupid the moment the words leave his mouth.  “You did a...you did a good job.”

JJ looks surprised, unbalanced for a moment, a champagne glass in one hand and an arm around his fiancee.  But then he recovers and flashes that trademark smile.  “Thank you.”

“I also...I know what it’s…”  The words dry up in his mouth in the wake of JJ’s smile.  He isn’t good at this--he isn’t good at words in general, let alone in English.  JJ is smiling at him uncomprehendingly, and Yuuri _doesn’t want to do this_.

Yuuri feels a hand on the small of his back, Victor sliding comfortably into the space behind him.  “Alright?” he asks in Japanese, and Yuuri lets himself lean into his touch.

“I get anxious too,” he says to JJ, not looking at Victor.  His voice is steady--maybe higher than usual, but not shaking or breaking under pressure.  He can control it, force his mouth to make shapes that feel unnatural to his non-native tongue.  “It’s hard to…  Skating is hard when you’re…”  He’s floundering, he knows, probably not terribly coherent, but he needs to say it, needs JJ to hear it.  He practiced this in his head, he swears he did, even if it’s coming out all wrong.  “That was brave.  What you did.  Skating anyway.”

“Oh,” JJ says, and his practiced smile slips away.  Yuuri forgets sometimes that despite his height and charisma and confidence, he’s actually younger than Phichit.  “Thank you.”

“Phichit was looking for you,” Victor murmurs in his ear, pressing himself closer than strictly necessary, but Yuuri lets himself be led away, nodding awkwardly to JJ but silently relieved that he doesn’t have to continue that conversation.

***

By the end of the banquet, Phichit and Victor have managed to organize the second annual GPF dance-off (Yuuri gets strong-armed into participating only because Phichit promises that there will be _no nudity this time_ , despite Victor’s objections).  There is no winner, since Victor is ruled to be inherently biased (“He’s married to you, for fuck’s sake,” Yuri snarls, and Victor corrects him that they’re not married _yet_ ), and none of the other coaches are willing to judge.  Yuuri has been tagged in what feels like a thousand posts--he turns off his phone after the first dozen, since he can feel his anxiety climbing from the attention.  Victor and Phichit figure out that they have shared knowledge of Japanese, and spend at least ten minutes trying to out-compliment Yuuri in his native language.  (“I love Yuuri’s...face,” Victor offers very seriously, while Phichit counters, “I love Yuuri’s shirt!”  Yuuri is fairly sure that both of them are cheating and looking up words on the internet, since they keep covertly checking their phones.)  Chris invites Yuuri to dance (Yuuri isn’t sure why he’s so surprised that Chris is as good at partner dancing as he is at pole dancing, but he is), and then Victor cuts in.  When Chris cuts in to dance with Victor, Phichit drags Yuuri back onto the dance floor, the two of them taking turns twirling each other with increasingly elaborate flourishes.

“Yuuri,” Victor drapes himself over Yuuri’s shoulders, a couple of drinks in but, thankfully, not any more naked than he started the evening, “how do you say ‘fiancé’ in Japanese?  This is important, Yuuri.  Teach me how to say it.”

“Only if you teach me how to say it in Russian,” Yuuri shoots back without thinking.

Victor smiles--a million kilowatts, a trillion kilowatts, Yuuri could honestly never quantify how brilliant and terrifying being caught in the blast of Victor Nikiforov’s smile is--and kisses him in front of everyone.

“ _Victor_.”

“ _Yuuri_ ,” he replies, unrepentant, and from the corner of his eye Yuuri sees Phichit not-very-subtly snap a picture.

**Author's Note:**

> So I wrote about all the fun language learning stuff for Victor, which means Yuuri gets all the horrible, anxiety-inducing language learning stuff. Sorry, Yuuri.
> 
> The genesis of this fic was rewatching the early episodes with a friend and Takeshi saying that Yuuri has never been good at making friends and me going, “Wait, WHAT.” Also thinking about relationality and wanting more fic with Phichit and crying about skater friends forever. Then I started writing and then just...kept writing...for literal months…??? Why do you do this, Queenie.
> 
> (Also I'm a couple of hours late for Phichit's birthday, but it's still his birthday somewhere, so let's pretend. Happy birthday, Phichit!)
> 
> Title comes from ["Pluto" by Sleeping at Last](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=noGzQhmVtAo), which is an intensely Yuuri song.
> 
> Time for more notes than you care to read! Bam:
> 
>  _Keigo_ \- Can be broken into two broad categories: honorific speech (for speaking respectfully to people of higher status and/or people in an out-group) and humble speech (for speaking humbly about yourself and/or people in your in-group to people in an out-group). While it's the bane of non-native speakers everywhere, folks in the younger generation of native speakers are also much less likely to be proficient (there are _keigo_ training programs/boot camps for this reason). The big exception is kids coming from families who own their own businesses--like Yuuri.
> 
> Delimiting the boundaries of “friend” - “Friend” in Japanese tends to be used less broadly than in English, at least in the circles I run in. You’re much more likely to refer to someone by their relation to you--my co-worker, my senpai, an acquaintance (知り合い is a great word), etc.--than as a generic “friend.” Of course, Yuuri magnifies that difference, because anxiety screws with perceptions of yourself and your relationships. *THUMBS UP*
> 
> Sound different in different languages - [Your voice does literally sound different in different languages](http://liesonthefloordramatically.tumblr.com/post/99894175881/your-voice-sounds-completely-different-in).  Generally speaking, women tend to speak Japanese at a higher pitch than English (it’s part of the reason anime girls may sound okay in Japanese but horrifyingly grating if they’re speaking at the same pitch in English dubs) and men speak Japanese at a slightly lower pitch than English.
> 
>  _Ga_ vs. _wa_ \- subject vs. topic marker. I could write like six paragraphs about this but if you've ever learned Japanese as a second language you already know what I'm talking about and if you haven't you probably don't want to know. Suffice to say this is an _incredibly_ common mistake.
> 
>  _Gintama_ vs. _kintama_ \- Listen, if you speak a second language you have at least one (probably more like fifteen) extremely embarrassing story.  This one is, fortunately, not mine. _Kintama_ means “testicles,” so if you, like my classmate, ask your host brother if he’s ever seen _kintama_...
> 
> Clapping out _mora_ \- In Japanese, a syllable equivalent is called a _mora_.  One of the ways beginning speakers are taught to pace their words correctly is by clapping out _mora_ \--one clap for one _mora_.  This is useful for practicing “small _tsu_ ” or doubled consonants-- _kite_ is two _mora_ , for example, but _kitte_ is three (the second _mora_ is similar to a glottal stop). 
> 
>  _Nee-san_ \- I suspect this is one a lot of people already know even if they don't speak Japanese, but it's a more familiar form of "big sister." Yuuri pretty consistently calls Mari "Mari-nee-san" which is like "Big Sister Mari." It's not unusual to call (non-relative) young women " _onee-san_ " (the more polite form) in the same way that you might call someone "young lady" in English.
> 
> Fluency - I present [one of my favorite quotations on fluency](http://liesonthefloordramatically.tumblr.com/post/120514804924/when-i-was-beginning-to-discover-languages-i-had) for your consideration.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] Show Me Where My Armor Ends](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11350011) by [Hananobira](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hananobira/pseuds/Hananobira)




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